April showers

Today (and most of this week) has been april showers and very claggy clay on site as Ian gets going on the landscaping.

Hardcore arrives for the driveway and paths around the house. Steve is sealing the windows ... in the rain, up a ladder. Yucky.

Paul constructing the balcony railing - made from Iroko wood it will match the juliet balcony on the right. The shutters on the SW facing bedroom windows have been fitted and look really good.

Green tiles have been added to the yellow kitchen, the hallway floor is done and you can see the shingles in the draught lobby in the background. Nearly there!

These are the jute carpets going in the bedroom. It's a natural fibre therefore recyclable, biodegradable etc and is quite soft under foot. I'm slightly underwhelmed by the beige colour (seemed nicer in small sample, looks flatter - the colour that is - than I thought it would in a larger area) but I think they'll go well with the theme of the house - natural browns against the white walls. Our stuff is going to add a lot of colour. We have sisal carpet for the landing, a coarser fibre - hardwearing and a slightly richer colour. Can't wait to see it all in place.

And finally here, the bathrooms are complete. Showers and fancy mirrors in. We got rather attached to the idea of demisting mirrors following a hotel stay recently and found these ones online encorporating LED lights too. Not sure they match the reclaimed sinks but we're not overly bothered about everything matching (as you've probably noticed). 

Citrus Chiffon 2

I didn't have the time or inclination to get tester pots and try out colours for the kitchen cupboards so I satisfied myself with matching colour swatches to the green tiles I have. Hmmmm. I spent a while trying to decide between various shades of cream/yellow and not wanting to be too pastel or heritage I plumped for something bright: Citrus Chiffon 2. I thought I was applying a little restraint as I peered at the 1 inch square of colour next to my tile but it turns out that in a large area Citrus Chiffon 2 is really very yellow!

It was a glorious couple of days for painting earlier this week (20 degrees plus, blue sky, sunshine, etc) and a thoroughly pleasant job. Nick and I have contemplated our very yellow cupboards and can't decide if they're going to work out or not. Time will tell.

Fitting of the kitchen starts monday. The steel work surface into which the sink will fit is arriving early in the week - it's been manufactured by my crew mate's wife's dad - he's a metal fabricator and offered a much better price than the online companies who make these things. It does mean I've had to specify it in detail so I have fingers crossed i've got it all right. The walnut work surface is on order, I've purchased the sink, tap and oven so just the hob and fridge to go.

It's been hard trying to decide whether to go for a gas or induction hob. We have, and I very much like using, gas, but the induction hobs do sound good and we'll have free electricity while there's daylight.

Whilst we were on site painting Ian and co. were installing the rainwater tank. The small digger was not enough for the job so a larger one was brought in and a huge hole dug. We have set up project cam at the back of the house last weekend as that's were all the action is at the moment but unfortunately not in time to catch the digger in the hole moment!

The garden at the back of the house is now full of trenches with pipes and drains going in all directions. Ian has spent the last two days trying to sort out the rainwater tank overflow - it was supposed to go into the pond but the pond level turned out to be higher than the overflow so he's had to dig more trenches round the pond and create a soak away at the bottom of the garden. It looks like a scene from the first world war back there at the moment.

Here is Nick with the draught lobby glazed screen frame which arrived on Wednesday. It looks lovely but has created Ian another conundrum for the week - how to get it in the house! Unfortunately opening of the sliding doors at the back of the house isn't big enough so he either has to take the sliding doors out of their frame, or cut the screen and reassemble in the house. It's looking like the latter option at the moment.

The wonders of reclaiming

The main theme of our house activity this week has been reclaim. I was on site Wednesday to receive delivery of our reclaimed floorboards and quarry tiles. Julian, the chap from Morways, and his dog arrived after lunch with a lorry onto which the floor boards appeared to have been randomly hurled!! He told me the lads loading the lorry had been left unsupervised and it would normally be much more organised. I suspect unloading may have been a bit of a mission even with the boards nicely stacked but the crazed nature of the loading added an interesting aspect to it all. It took us the best part of 4 hours to get it all unloaded and stacked. Phew.

From the lorry into the playroom. That's a bit under half of it stacked below. We have oak boards for the two smaller rooms we are boarding and maple for the main living area. 

The utility and boiler room are being tiled tomorrow so we had to get the tiles cleaned up today. Even Jasper is joining in here but Dad and Rachel (my sister, ducking behind dad here) were our main helpers - thank you to them. Some of the tiles were lovely and clean and just needed the dust and dirt brushing off but a lot had big chunks of mortar stuck to them and were a real pain to get cleaned up. They should be laid close together - with just a couple of mm gap. We certainly didn't manage to get all the mortar off them and also found that there are several batches, some which differ in size by 2-3mm, so I'm slightly worried about what the tiler will make of them. Guess we'll find out tomorrow - Nick and I will be back on site to get a few more cleaned up to make sure they have enough for the 2 rooms. 

We still have about half the total amount of tiles to clean up and quite a lot of the floor boards will need the tongue and groove cleaning so all in all a few days activity left on all this. The reclaim materials seem to be a similar sort of price to new but are certainly causing us a lot more work. Hey ho. We get instant character and a virtuous feeling for all our efforts. 

Otherwise on site we have the beginnings of our greenhouse/conservatory in place and the stairs have arrived. The scaffolding at the front of the house has come down and the final door and windows have been installed at the rear of the hallway. The house was bathed in light this afternoon - the amount of light that comes inside is amazing. It also felt rather nice and warm in there. Fab.

Made from yellow pine the stairs have a gorgeous pale colour and grain.

The first paint on the walls - the boiler room on the right here needs a floor and paint early so the services, boiler and thermal store (water tank) can be put in place. We get gas on the 23rd and electricity March 1st.

The final windows to go in. Look at all that light :-)

Shingles

We were on site Thursday and the cladding on the front of the house was nearly finished. Most exciting though was the shingles being hung on the two straight sides of the house (boarding on the gable ends, shingles on the sides). It's all looking rather fabulous in my opinion.

The boarding will all be painted but the shingles will stay untreated and should weather to a pleasant grey colour. I talked in an earlier post about the paint mix. This greenish colour was pinched from university building in Cambridge. We got the paint details and instructions for the finish (which involved several coats) but failed to note that the paint is meant to be 'one coat' only - designed to show the grain of the wood through the colour. The effect on the main boarded areas is lovely but we used the white that formed part of the colour mix on the window surrounds and soffits/facias etc and a washed out look is not so good here. It proved difficult to apply extra coats as it's only designed for one coat (not helped by very cold conditions) so we still need to sort out a decent solid colour for the white areas. 

Peeking out of the study oriel window (upstairs bay). They make an interesting alcove in the room and have small side lights only so we can get some light, but not overlook the lawn at number 1. Outside you can see the shingles being hung and further along the master bedroom oriel.

The offset angle of the two sides of the house make an interesting view from the master bedroom through to the bedroom on the other side of the landing (and in the other direction). 

A quick site visit

Ian phoned this afternoon to say that there was a problem with the positioning of the greenhouse. The greenhouse rafters should line up with the clearstory windows above them but somewhere along the line the slab and the windows have ended up 150mm out at one end and a bit less at the other. It's enough just to make it look uneven. Nick and I were both about this afternoon so we popped over to site to discuss adjustments. I got some good pics:

From left, Steve, Ian and Nick the joiner standing where the greenhouse will be. Our new sliding folding doors look great and match the Greensteps windows nicely. They are double glazed rather than triple and bi-fold doors tend to be a bit leaky but as the greenhouse will be on the outside of this whole opening they will be protected from the elements so we thought we could afford the lower spec in this respect here. Less glazing means they are lighter and therefore easier to operate.  

Actual plaster on the walls. Wow!

The seamless guttering was going up today. This machine is in the back of a transit - you can see the black rolls of aluminium sheet which feed through the machine and come out in the profile you can see just above the yellow label. 

How many men does it take to put up some guttering? Four apparently!

A day and a night

Nick is away for a couple of days so I was on site at 9 yesterday morning to meet with Ian and the plumber(s). They are finishing off the first fix and wanted one or the other of us to be there to ensure all the pipes are in the right place before they are all covered up with plasterboard (see plumbing extra post below). It was quite a busy day on site and I had intended on getting an afternoon nap before my night shift but that never happened :-(

Our sliding folding doors were also installed and they look great, matching the Greensteps windows very well. Paul and Steve were working on the bargeboards and soffits (roof timber details) on the South East side of the house - I think the plan was to get the guttering up today and then take the scaffolding on this side of the house down tomorrow. Ian needs it removed as soon as possible so the greenhouse can go up and he can get  the site hut thing that he's been hiring off site as it's not needed any more (currently stuck on site as scaffolding is in the way of it's exit route). We/the architects specified seamless aluminium guttering which is formed on site. Unfortunately there seems to be only one profile available and we don't like it that much ... we got the sample last week but haven't had the time (or inclination) to do a whole load of guttering research to check out all our other options so we're going to live with it. I wish I'd got my act together and asked for a sample in grey but we didn't realise it was going up today so when we asked Ian about it yesterday it was all a bit too late and it will be black.

Not to be outdone by the development across the road, Nick designed this rather lovely sign so everyone knows where we are and all the Washpit Lane dog walkers can see what's going on.  

Nick's office taking shape. Some of the window boards are in and you can just see the gluelam beams which will be exposed at the top of all the upstairs rooms.

This is a shot of the landing. It will be a really interesting space with the earth wall and instead of taking the walls vertically to meet the ceilling these alcoves follow the line of the roof structure which should give a sense of how the building is put together. You can see here in the furthest alcove the ventilation pipe which rather unfortunately runs straight through our lovely design feature. The system design didn't take into account the alcove and it would have been very convoluted to go round it. Nick and I talked about boxing in a bit more of the alcove but Nick says he doesn't mind seeing the pipe (!) and so it will stay for the moment and I will save judgement til the area is finished - we can box later if it offends.

The master bedroom with an open passage through to the en suite. You can see the earth wall to the right and the underfloor heating manifolds in our built in wardrobe which is on the route round to the en suite. 

Had a very nice lunch on Saturday with Meg & Frank, hosted by my folks. You can see here that it's a house of two halves at the moment. The upstairs is starting to look a bit more finished and the down stairs, here, still very much like a building site.

1st fix and appendix

I started a blog last weekend but the computer got stuck trying to upload pictures so I gave up. It's now been a couple of weeks since i've posted anything during which time Nick has parted company with his appendix! The useless appendage started giving him some trouble a few weeks ago and was finally removed last Saturday. Recovery is going well.

Quite a lot has happened with the house. On the exterior JoJu have completed the roofing system that goes under the panels and much of the house has been battened. All the windows that fit are in! We seem to have lost a few centimeters in the centre section so the 1st story windows here won't fit without some adjustments. Ian should be contacting SIPs UK to discuss, well find out progress this afternoon when he meets Nick.

Inside, plumbing and electrics 1st fix (bits to go in before plasterboarding) are mostly finished and the 1st floor underfloor heating pipes are installed.

Hospital admission for your birthday? Yes, please!

The small living area windows looking out towards the pond/tennis court. Front door stacked on the right. 

And from the outside ... it's a bit hard to see from the pictures but there is a sort of reverse bay here. The middle section is set back into the house creating corner window seats on the inside and a central recess for a seat on the outiside. 

Upstairs a reflective membrane on the floor will reflect the heat from the under floor heating pipes upwards. On the left you can see the clerestory windows that run the length of the house at the front. 

Gotta go xmas shopping now. Hope you're all looking forwards to festivities? I'm off work. Can't wait :-)

Windows delivery

Today saw the arrival of our windows. Very exciting!

It seems like a long time ago when we did our windows shopping. We priced up some of the more expensive elements of the house about a year ago to try and get a handle on the budget, so got a load of windows quotes in and chose a company we liked way back then ...

We wanted (and have got) timber, triple glazed windows. British built would have been nice but doubled the price so Greensteps is the company we have used in the end. Their price was very good, the product and hardware seemed good quality when Nick paid them a visit and they have been very responsive and helpful to all our enquiries. The windows are inwards opening, which is usual in northern Europe, and apparently gives a better seal - it will be interesting to see how we go with those. They are made in Latvia I think, or Lithuania. I was just looking on their website to see which and found a 'making of' video. Doesn't seem to say were the factory is though :-/

Windows! It's dark inside the house at the moment because it's all wrapped up - including the window openings. You can see the blue internal membrane behind the windows, for airtightness. 

Our big sliding doors that will look out the back of the family/living room.

We have another large opening between the main living room and the green house where we have sliding/folding doors - something Greensteps don't do. They are much less airtight (as Greensteps rightly pointed out) but we felt we could afford slightly reduced performance here as the greenhouse will buffer these windows from the elements. So we have splashed the cash and ordered some swanky double glazed doors that will open right out. Should make a lovely big space in the summer. Still awaiting delivery of these.